Legend of the Northwest

IMDb lists the release year for this film as 1978, but this is clearly not when it was filmed. The cinematography, outfits, hairstyles, and film grain all look like the 1960s, and the final clue is that Denver Pyle (the only familiar face in the film) visibly looks much younger than he did in any of his other 1978 credits. If 1978 was indeed when the film first saw the light of day, it had sat on a shelf for many years.

The plot is about a large dog in the Old West who witnesses his owner murdered by bandits. He becomes a stray, but has a string of bad luck. He keeps finding himself in situations where the local townspeople mistake him for a vicious dog, and they drive him out of town. The film goes out of its way to fault the townspeople for not examining the situations more closely, but this is not fair---if you or I witnessed the events as the characters see them, we would likely arrive at the same conclusion.

Overall, the film is a bore that I doubt any of today's children would find interesting.